General Learning • Tenneson Woolf

June 1, 2016

The Circle Way — An Anectdote

Recently I was with a group of people with whom I was able to introduce a very simplified version of using The Circle Way for groups of six people. It was an opportunity to practice. Real stuff of course. For this use of The Circle Way, I required them to use a talking piece and to go through the process of passing it around the circle (not popcorn). My hope was that participants would experienced a deeper layer of listening together. They did.

In processing with the group after, I invited the group of 40 to share. What was that like? Several favorable comments were shared about a different pace, a needed way of listening that was immediately evident.

My favorite comment, however was this one: “When you know you are going to get a chance to speak, there is less of a need to interrupt.”

That is the kind of comment, and practice, that could very well change an organization’s culture.

Just sayin’.

May 31, 2016

Home

Bells Blooming

I just arrived to Utah, home, for a stretch of what will be 18 days. Greeted by these flowers growing in my garden, that had not blossomed when I last left, and tomato cages ready to be put to work. This period of time “at home” is noticeable to me for its duration. Eighteen days feels spacious and huge. Enough time to do laundry more than once! Enough time to spend an evening with friends.

I’m enough of a geek to want to remember the last time I was home for this kind of stretch. It was December 2015. I don’t know about the time before that. That was likely last summer.

I’ve written about home before. For example, in 2012, this reflection after being in my hometown of Edmonton, Alberta. And in 2015, this post on the geography of home. Today, however, my reflections are about this simple narrative.

For there to be home, there must be intimacy.
For there to be intimacy, there must be friendship.
For there to be friendship, there must be freedom.

I know, these are big categories of words — what does one mean by intimacy, friendship, and freedom, right?

The intimacy I’m speaking of here is a softness in the belly. To be willing or able to share with vulnerability. “I feel this way — wow, you feel that way; tell me more!” To feel a kind of trust that doesn’t arise from warnings or subtle fear-born threats. The intimacy here is a welcome to let go, and to be in quiet together.

For friendship, I’m talking about people that I laugh with. The friends I enjoy the most are the ones that I can be completely serious with, and, completely silly with. I enjoy them because there is a shared ability to turn quickly from one to the other, as needed. It’s as though somehow knowing that there is ability to be in the full range together makes enjoyment of one part that much more vibrant. Sometimes my friends and I are changing the world. Sometimes, we are just laughing at our follies.

The freedom that I’m speaking here is freedom to choose. Not into a manipulated or coerced choice that someone else is lobbying for (unless it is done with great silliness and humor of course). But real choice. Not demands that masquerade as choices. Real choices in which the the very act of choosing, the act of enacting a life through choices both explicitly and implicitly, are respected. Maybe not fully agreed to, but definitely respected.

I love the home that is a good bowl of a favorite soup. I love the home that is seeing the green beans that I planted ten days ago peaking through the ground. I love the home that is my dog laying in the doorway of whatever room I find myself sitting in. I love the home that knows me, welcomes me, that resonates with familiarity like the way my body fits in my bed.

And.

And maybe, just maybe, home is also the place where we are quite wholly and naturally friends, laughing and exploring and even crying a bit over the choices we make and how we are encountering our freedom to be.

May 30, 2016

Remember

Memorial Day Orem 2016

It’s Memorial Day in the United States. Many people will be celebrating with backyard picnics and barbecues. Many outdoor swimming pools and parks will open. It is a long weekend, that for many, marks the beginning of summer.

I remember the first Memorial Day I experienced in the United States, in 1987. I was driving past a large cemetery in Provo, Utah. Cut flowers, bright yellow “mums” in potted plants, and small flags dotted nearly every gravesite. It was impressive.

For many, Memorial Day is opportunity to pay tribute to people in military service, past and present. At the airport today, the gate agent invited 30 seconds of silence to honor the military personnel on board our flight. In the crowded and cacophonous terminal, I was drawn to this simple and kind pause.

Memorial day has also become a day to generally honor people who have passed. My former spouse’s family had a great tradition of cutting flowers from their gardens, peonies if the growing season permitted, to place at the grave site of grandparents and other family. Then her dad would tell a story or two. It was playful. Often with laughter. Sometimes with tears. It was an invocation to remember.

Remember.

For the last year when I’ve often been starting leadership events with an invocation to remember. Though many have come to learn what they think are new participative methodologies and frameworks, I often say, “I think we have come to learn and remember some things that we already know. We’ve come to remember some essential aspects of what it means to be in learning together, what it means to take journey together, and what it means to count on each other. Remember kindness. Remember curiosity. Remember the power of sharing a story as a way of learning together. Remember a quality of trust. Remember honesty together. Remember hope together.”

I don’t speak those words as a way to falsely motivate people, though I’m happy that they do settle participants into a simple narrative of what we are about to do for two to three days.

Remember.

Sometimes remembering, memorializing, is about invoking the past. Sometimes, perhaps, the remembering is to realize that there is much that we already know about bringing a future into the present.

May 26, 2016

It’s As Simple As

I’m a fan of “it’s as simple as” statements. In particular, the ones that come after an experience or ordeal that are spoken from the gut. There are things that you can’t know before the experience. There are thoughts that can’t be sorted until there has been some settling down from our good minds. There are insights and clarity that can’t occur until one let’s go, hands to the sky (or earth if you prefer) in a kind of surrender.

It was the early 20th century American legal great, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. that is the source of one of the quotes that I most use when talking about simplicity. “I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity. But I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” It’s the difference between reductionism that is convenient but has very little to do with accuracy (the before complexity) and the gut-check clarity that comes often with a real economy of words (the other side of complexity).

In the month of May I have helped to facilitate and host two multi-day leadership events. Both of these had 40+ participants. Both involved some good teaching, some solid interacting and befriending one another. Both involved some moments of deep dive, in which the level of voice dropped a bit in tone and speed to make way for the less-often truth-telling and simplicity that Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke of.

At both of these events, in the closing words, the last bits of gratitude spoken to those who have participated, and the tucking in of overarching narrative, I’ve found myself speaking, “Maybe it’s as simple as” statements. In one, “Maybe it is a simple as being willing to turn to one another with our stories, our good questions, and our willingness to lean in together. The rest has a way of taking care of itself.” At the other, “Maybe it’s as simple as being willing to take a journey together, to dare to be simple. Just like Hobbits (yes, I invoked a Tolkien reference), who take epic journeys to mountains to accomplish daunting tasks, with little more than their backpacks and a group of good friends.”

I have seen a pattern often that I saw in both of these events. Come together. Touch a center with one another. Then return to our respective jobs, teams, families, and communities — changed. Dwelling in learning. Long enough to feel a shared, simple belonging and imagination. Then going about our business, knowing that we can return together to touch the center again, changed by the awareness that it is perhaps as simple as turning to one another, and simple as being willing to take the journey together that makes all the difference.